Founding Account Executive, AI Talent Placement

Pursuit•New York City, NY

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

Pursuit is seeking an entrepreneurial, hands-on Founding Director of Sales for our AI Talent Placement team. This role involves managing and landing placements of Pursuit’s AI Trained builders into full-time roles at a wide range of employer accounts. The role reports directly to the CEO initially and will manage a pipeline derived from Pursuit’s established employer relationships and network. The successful candidate will own the full sales cycle from introduction to closing deals and driving the Builder match through to a signed hire. As this placement motion is evolving, the role requires rapid iteration and improvement based on market feedback. This is an opportunity to help build the commercial infrastructure for landing AI-native business roles and achieve scale over the next 18 months.

Requirements

5+ years closing B2B business (sales, business development, strategic partnerships, staffing and recruiting, or professional services).
A track record against a number: quota, placement targets, revenue goals, or comparable measurable outcomes.
Comfortable with an offering that changes shape per account; experience selling something where the answer to 'what exactly am I buying' had to be built during the conversation.
Strong discovery skills with the ability to uncover and shape real business and hiring needs rather than defaulting to a standard pitch.
Experience owning a full cycle or leading complex partnership conversations from first contact through close.
Pipeline discipline as a habit, not a chore; ability to explain conversion rates by stage and identify where deals die.
Ability to translate capability into business value for very different buyers.
High tolerance for ambiguity and a bias toward testing rather than waiting for a defined strategy.
Executive presence across engineering, product, operations, and talent leadership.
Committed to expanding economic opportunity and to Pursuit's mission.

Nice To Haves

Experience selling talent, staffing, recruiting, services, or marketplaces is a plus.
Experience opening a new territory, launching a new motion, or helping build a market, and personally doing the outreach, discovery, and follow-through required to make it work.
Experience closing businesses where the offer had to be invented on the call.
Ability to turn a vague employer need into a concrete hiring use case and explain why a specific skill set could create value.
Preference for converting warm executive relationships over cold-calling.
Ability to tell a hiring manager they should create a role that doesn't exist yet, and be right.
Experience working in a startup, high-growth company, or entrepreneurial environment where wearing multiple hats was the norm.

Responsibilities

Own warm executive introductions end to end, from first conversation through a Builder starting work.
Run consultative discovery to understand a company's business priorities, team gaps, and hiring constraints.
Translate Pursuit talent capabilities into concrete roles, use cases, and business outcomes tailored to each employer.
Design the commercial structure for each opportunity (direct hire, multi-hire cohort, paid apprenticeship, etc.).
Follow up consistently and creatively to keep opportunities moving, navigate objections, and maintain momentum through long or ambiguous sales cycles.
Maintain disciplined pipeline tracking, outreach activity, next steps, and employer records across internal systems.
Share patterns and feedback from employer conversations with the team to continuously improve messaging, targeting, and the placement motion.
Use AI tools to improve prospecting, account research, personalization, follow-up, workflow automation, and relationship management.
Build and run the funnel, defining stages and qualification criteria, keeping next steps dated, and holding a forecast in weekly reviews.
Use AI as a force multiplier across research, personalization, follow-up, and account management.